


Kitchen Nightmares

by daisybrien



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Baking, F/F, Fluff, Food Fight, Friendship/Love, Gen, Humor, Messy, Modern Era, Multi, Play Fighting, Polyamory, Post-Canon, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Romantic Friendship, Sweet, ish, playfighting, probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-02
Updated: 2016-06-02
Packaged: 2018-07-11 17:33:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7062730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisybrien/pseuds/daisybrien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jane's attempt to teach her girlfriends how to bake ends in a decimated kitchen, three ruined desserts, and a violent food fight, but none of them are intent to call it a failure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kitchen Nightmares

Roxy is the one who looses the chaos upon the kitchen, barely realizing her unfortunate slip of the finger on the switch of the mixer before it is flying at her face like a hurricane. She hears it happen more than sees it; the violent, screaming whirr of the spinning whisks sending her heart leaping in her chest the way the batter leaps from the bowl, whipping across the room and finding its sticky home against countertop and cupboards with a wet thwack. Calliope gives a trilling shriek, voice drowned out against the speeding machinery. Roxy is only able to see her cower after she’s fumbled the switch off again, and wiped the mess from her stinging eyes. She doesn’t move over to reassure, still overcome by the same fright and dread as they look out at the decimation of the kitchen in front of them. 

The moment they hear Jane’s retro red pumps clacking towards them from the hallway, the two have resigned themselves to the fate of whatever punishment she will bring them. There is no time to fix the calamity that has consumed the kitchen in such a short time, the extra time it takes for her to look up from wiping her glasses on her apron and perching them on her nose taunting. Her face of calm cheeriness is wiped clean, her eyes growing wide behind the frames as she gawks at the scene before her.

“I was gone for less than a minute,” Jane breathes, her cheeks flushing red with heat as she looks around, growing flustered by the second. “And yet you’ve managed to make a mess of everything.”

Roxy is too late to take her hand off the handle of the mixer, her thumb still held tightly over the switch she hadn’t been fast enough to turn off. Jane’s glare is bearing down on her the second she spots her with it, raising an eyebrow at the batter splattered all down the front of her shirt, clinging to her hair and face in sticky clumps.

She shrinks under her gaze, looking at Jane with wide, apologetic eyes and a brilliant smile as she unfurls her shaking hand from the mixer’s handle, extending one finger in Calliope’s direction.

“Hey!” Callie jumps, jolting from the stiff stature she had adopted against the projectile batter. She’s recovered from the miniature explosion enough to turn to Roxy indignantly, shocked at her indecency to pass off the responsibility of her mistake. 

“Don’t go blaming other people for your own mess now, Roxy,” Jane scolds, taking the words straight from Calliope’s mouth. She plants her fists on her hips; shoulders squared and back straight like an army officer as her eyes scrutinize the scene. Her smirk is scarier than her glare, sly satisfaction exuding from her in an inquisitive confidence. “Not when I’ve got you red-velvet handed.”

Roxy groans. “Do you have to make a pun outta this?”

“It was too good to be true to be able to leave you guys without a disaster,” Jane sighs. She bows her shaking head, crossing her arms over her heavy bust as she begins to scuttle around the kitchen. “I can make the best of this situation with all the puns I want.”

“It’s just food,” Roxy says; she pulls at her clothes, sticky and heavy with milky batter mixture. She runs a hand through her hair, wincing as her fingers catch in the clumps of matted and sticky tangles, powdery flour drifting down along with the slow flow of gunk from the ends of her curls. She doesn’t move, partly afraid of finding more things to fuck up, partly to keep her last thread of dignity from disintegrating under the lecture no doubt broiling under Jane’s skin. 

“Uncooked, raw, inedible food,” she begins. The bite of her words is accented by the violent slam of drawers, her hands navigating the maze of the kitchen with adept experience. “Food that should have been put in the oven to bake nicely instead of tossed around all willy-nilly.”

“Still food,” Roxy retorts. She runs a finger through what little is left dripping at the edges of the bowl, scooping up a glob of batter. “And only inedible to the weak-stomached.”

“Don’t you dare eat that raw,” Jane warns, her head buried deep in a cabinet. “You’ve already made a mess, I don’t need another one induced by an unfortunate case of salmonella.”

“Oh, dear,” Callie pipes in. She’s following Jane dutifully, hovering in an attempt to help as she tries not to trip across the slick tile. Her eyes go wide, looking at the two of them in alarm, her rich, red covered fingers only inches from her mouth. She eyes the batter, unsure of whether to continue. “That sounds quite nasty.”

“’Tis,” she confirms. “I don’t think an upset stomach over raw egg will help this conundrum much.”

“It’s only a lil’ bit,” Roxy says.

“After you got sick over three of the whisks used to make Jake’s birthday cake, that is not going to convince me in the slightest.” Jane straightens up, her butt no longer sticking out from behind cabinet doors. 

She has a roll of paper towel in hand, the plaid of the buff lumberjack on the front a much more reassuring red than that of Betty Crocker Brand cutlery peeking out against the stark white of the walls. The splotches of red velvet add new sparkle to the room, not unlike the blood splatters at a murder scene. 

A brutalized kitchen would be a good start to a murderesque mystery novel, Roxy thinks; her head already imagines the crappy doodles in her journal, illustrating the brutal murder of the undercover spy tasked to overthrow Betty Crocker Corporation being caught and beaten to death by Betty herself, using her own brand name measuring cups to bash his head in against the million dollar quarts granite top her amazing salary grants her. Rose could do something like that justice.

Her mind ceases to spin the tale, snapped out of its reverie when she spots Calliope licking the tips of her fingers. 

“’SCUSE me,” Roxy exclaims. “What did Janey just say about food poisoning?”

“It’s only raw egg,” Calliope says, slipping her thumb out from between two sharp teeth with a wet pop. “I’ll be fine.”

“Callie, you might be fucking awesome, but you might not be a fucking awesome exception to puking your guts worth of uncooked meat like a Sunday morning hangover.”

“Lucky carnivorous me, I guess,” she chirps with a satisfied, giddy smirk, raising her eyebrows in a playful taunt as she licks the batter off another finger.

Roxy blows a raspberry at her, pouting as she shifts under the uncomfortable weight of her dirty clothes. She grumbles miserably, ignoring Callie’s enthused praise at the sweetness of the batter and Jane’s call for at least some shred of maturity among them; just because they cook like adorably annoying tots doesn’t mean that warrants acting like them. Her seething only burns hotter in her chest as she’s doled a handful of paper towel and left crouching on the ground to wipe up the mess.

Roxy disagrees; she’d rather act like a child if it means wiping Calliope’s gentle taunt from her face with the sticky wad of cake mix she manages to scoop off the floor.

It smacks against the side of the girl’s skull with a wet slap that echoes off the walls like a gunshot. It stuns the room into silence, nothing else heard but Calliope’s soft gasp as her eyes grow like massive, green saucers in her face, her hand moving up slowly to pad at the sight of impact.

Indignant betrayal sinks into the lines of her skeletal face as she slowly turns to face Roxy, shock and outrage etched in the stretched skin of her gaping ‘O’ of a mouth and the wrinkles of her furrowed brow. They watch each other slowly, Roxy flashing a cunning smile – one ready to morph into remorseful spiel in case it unleashes a sensitive bundle of nerves in the Calliope’s heart – faltering as the moment between them grows strained and awkward. The mush of the soaked towel is wet and gross against her hand as she leans into it, sinking lower into herself as her confidence dissipates into insecurity at her action.

She makes the mistake of trying to speak a feeble apology, her mouth opening to speak only to gag against the batter that is flung at her face with a vicious, competitive giggle. 

“You did not just-!” Roxy’s scream rings through the air like a battle cry, devolving into shrieking laughter as the two of them go to war on the floor. Cake mix flies, falling into hair and mouths and making messes of each other’s faces, the bottoms of their pants growing damp and dirty as they pin each other down on the floor. Batter is shoved into faces and smeared against skin like paint, Jane’s cries for a ceasefire falling deaf on their ears. Hands grab for wrists and ankles to stop hasty retreats or the fast flick of the arm in another throw, tackling and tickling each other to illicit some of the most horridly shrill sounds of playful joy. 

The batter acts as their freshly fallen snow, the kitchen their sparkling white and red winter wonderland. They treat it that way, balling them up into fists like snowballs and watching them disintegrate as they soar. Roxy erupts in guffaws as Calliope shivers and cringes with a shriek at the clump that Roxy manages to shove down the back of her shirt. 

Calliope claims herself a bag of chocolate chips, throwing them like the hail of a catapult. Roxy manages to catch some in her mouth, falling against the counter as her socks slide against the slippery floor, one hand stretching out for the frosting bag lying just out of her reach.

“That is enough!” Jane erupts, standing stiff between the two of them. Her face is flushed a brilliant shade of exasperated red, her glasses askew on her face and apron crooked, a stray chocolate chip striking her in the temple before the two of them shrink back against her towering form.

“All I wanted was a nice, calm baking session with you two,” Jane says. She straightens out her skirt, flicking off clumps of mix that cling to her apron. “I wanted to surprise everyone when they came over with red velvet cake and a batch of fresh cookies, not the likes of a zoo where baboons have run rampant!”

Calliope bows her head, the nervous twist of her hands growing earnest as Jane stomps her way around the kitchen. Roxy watches her go as she sighs at the half-empty bowls, a frown drawing out her gorgeous face, disappointment a shine her bright blue eyes. 

“What is a baboon?” Callie whispers. Roxy doesn’t answer. She’s too intent on the woman sulking over the pathetic remains of what could have been an artful, edible masterpiece. Roxy can’t help but feel a pang of regret pull at her heart. Although prankster shenanigans were a love of all three of them, Jane shared the same passion for her extravagant baking skills - they were extravagant, Roxy would always insist, despite Jane’s modest denial of it – and her attempt to share it with them had ended in messy failure. She looks down at the batter caked in the lines of her palms. Jane had placed something dear into them today and Roxy had been too careless to make sure she wouldn’t fumble.

“Janey?” Roxy says. She gets up carefully, coming up behind her. The light of the refrigerator makes her silhouette glow, even in the fluorescent bright potlights of the kitchen. “Janey, honey.”

Jane sighs, her slumped shoulders rising and falling heavily. She stays silent, hand shuffling through the fridge. Roxy presses on.

“Janey, I’m really sorry.” She steps closer, pressing her forehead to Jane’s shoulder blade, a request for reconciliation. “I really wanted to share this time with you today. We both did. I’m sorry I couldn’t help but be too silly to do that.”

“It’s alright,” Jane sighs quietly.

“No it isn’t,” Roxy says. “I promised I would do something wonderful for you, and let you teach the two of us how to bake, and that we would have had something great for our friends when they came over. And I let Callie down too, since this is her first time trying out baking and I should’ve been more considerate-“

“Roxy, it really is fine,” Jane says. She turns around, with a tray in her hands. Meringue sits on top of a crust, masterfully swirled in gorgeous design across it. “It is all fun and games.”

“Janey-“ she tries to insist that it’s not, to assure Jane of her caring, but is interrupted. 

“It’s just a shame on my part, I usually have a back up. A Crocker is always prepared!” She looks down at the pie sadly. “Unfortunately, this won’t do either.”

“Why not?” Roxy says, leaning over it. “It looks fine-“

Jane smashes it into her face.

It’s aluminum tray falls from Roxy’s face with a tinny clang, leaving a crumbly piecrust and lemon meringue custard like a thick mask over her face. She hears a squeal of laughter from the floor, Calliope no doubt curled around herself in hysterics. When Roxy wipes the filling from her eyes, Jane’s cunning smile is shining up at her, blue eyes shining with wonderful mischievousness.

A chocolate chip hits Roxy in the temple, sticking in the meringue. She turns to the two of them, glaring at their grinning teeth and ready hands that are already grasping cans of whip cream and other tooth rotting foodstuffs before splitting into a smirk of her own. 

With a swipe at the pie on her face and a soft smack to Jane’s cheek, she incites her righteous conflict, ready for the kitchen to erupt into its prior merry battlefield.

“This means war.”


End file.
